A 54-year-old New Jersey woman had her left tibia fractured on Wednesday after a fellow Staples customer threw her to the ground because she had been asked to wear her mask correctly. The incident is just the latest in an ever-growing list of ridiculous (sometimes violent) shit that has resulted from people taking our current face-covering culture war to a truly extreme level. In case it's not clear from the sentence above, the woman who was thrown to the ground asked the person who tossed her to cover her face. It happened around 3:19 p.m. on Wednesday at a Hackensack Staples, and there is surveillance footage:
The victim has been identified as Margot Kagan. She told police that she was using one of the store's fax machines when a woman whose mask was pulled below her mouth came up to the machine next to her, according to NBC News. Kagan, who was using a cane on account of having a recent liver transplant, said she asked the woman to put on her mask.
“The woman on one side of the plastic dividers had a mask, but here, below her mouth…I said, ‘You should really put a mask on' … she proceeded to curse, curse me out,” Kagan said to News 12. “And I said to her, ‘You’re endangering everyone,’ and I went back to faxing."
Things quickly escalated further.
"The suspect became angry and yelled at the victim, who picked up her walking cane and pointed it directly at the suspect, coming within inches of the suspect's chest," said Capt. Darrin DeWitt, a local detective.
The woman yelled at Kagan and threw her down. Then she left the store.
Kagan was taken to a local hospital and diagnosed with a fractured left tibia. She will have a steel plate surgically put into her knee.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy had previously signed an executive order stating residents have to wear masks in stores, but you may have noticed that not everyone cares.
Anyway, surveillance footage of the incident was captured (obviously), but the suspect has yet to be publicly identified/caught.
